Shayan Afzal

I will not call this love too easily.
Some words lose blood when spoken far too soon.
But you have moved through me invisibly,
as evening moves across a silent room.

I find you in the pause before I speak,
in ordinary light against the wall,
in all the places where my pride grows weak,
and where the heart admits it needs at all.

No thunder names you. Nothing breaks the sky.
You are not noise, not flame, not sudden art.
You are the quiet reason I know why
some absences can live inside the heart.

And if the world should pass you by unseen,
know this: you alter everything in me.